Amidst the uncertainties of the future, Christian musician Brandon Lake encourages us to practice celebration as a rhythm that enhances our joy in the present. By incorporating savoring, thanksgiving, and play into our lives, we can experience deeper connections, process our emotions, and amplify our happiness.
In the realm of human experience, we often find ourselves tormented by "what-if" questions that cast shadows on our anticipation for the future. We wonder if our dreams will lead to disappointment, our hopes to heartbreak, or our efforts to failure. The fear of rejection looms over our pursuit of meaningful connections. These anxieties stem from our apprehension about whether we will be granted reasons for joy or permission to celebrate in the year ahead.
Traditionally, we associate celebrations with endings, viewing them as reactions to positive outcomes or rewards for accomplishments. We believe we require a reason to rejoice, relegating our happiness to the distant horizon of realized dreams or achieved goals. However, this perception often proves to be an elusive mirage. When we reach the supposed finish line, joy seems to shift its position to the other side of another goal or dream.
Celebrate Your Life: Embracing Joy in the Present
But what if we reframed our perspective and embraced celebration not as a reaction or reward, but as a rhythm that enhances our joy in the lives we currently live? This practice is not dependent on favorable circumstances or future outcomes. It is available to us right now, regardless of the pain and joy that may await us.
To incorporate this transformative practice into our lives, consider the following three suggestions:
Celebrate Your Life: Embracing Joy in the Present
Savoring involves celebrating the ordinary, cultivating an awareness of what brings us joy and deepening our connection to it. It extracts happiness from moments our brains might otherwise overlook or dismiss. By savoring these experiences, we prevent them from fading into insignificance.
Take a moment from your day, whether present or captured in a photo of a joyful experience. Imagine using your brain to take a mental photograph of it. Engage your five senses to capture every detail of the moment: what you see, smell, hear, taste, and feel. By savoring the ordinary, you celebrate your life and amplify the joy you already possess.
Gratitude profoundly impacts our joy. Research confirms that practicing gratitude helps us recognize and appreciate the positive aspects of life, shaping our perspective and giving voice to our feelings. However, expressing our gratitude to others or to God through prayer doubles the joy we would experience from simply feeling grateful in our hearts.
Thanksgiving provides us with an avenue to celebrate our gifts with those who have given them to us. Joy multiplies when it is shared. This is also true in our prayers. Through thanksgiving, we can celebrate our gifts with God and experience a twofold increase in our joy.
Fun is not an indulgence but a divine gift and a potent defense against burnout. We often dismiss celebration as unnecessary or frivolous, fearing that it may numb our pain and distract us from life's challenges. However, celebration helps us process our experiences and emotions, while escapism merely pauses our reactions.
Celebration is not a means of evading the pain that bruises our hearts but rather grounds us in the reality that both our sorrow and our hope are valid. It offers us a way to process both.
Instead of embarking on a new season with anxiety, questioning whether you will find reasons for joy or permission to celebrate your life, embrace celebration as a practice you can begin right now. We possess more control over our happiness than we realize. Don't wait to celebrate. Embrace the joy that is already present in your life.
